The speaker in the dock.

Mulligan, William H., Jr.

RUAN O'DONNELL. Robert Emmet and the Rebellion of 1798. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2003.

FOLLOWING ON THE BICENTENNIAL of the Rebellion of 1798, which led to a number of valuable books and essays on that event and its participants as well as a memorable exhibit, we have now seen a number of books and essays on Robert Emmet and the Rising he led in 1803 appearing in recognition of the bicentennial. O'Donnell's book on Emmet is more than a commemorative volume, it is a work of extensive research amend deep familiarity with its subject.

Emmet is famous as the leader of 1803 and even more for his speech from the dock and its memorable peroration, "Let no man write my epitaph," etc. He is one of the heroes who "died for Ireland." Despite Emmet's prominence or, perhaps more accurately, fame, there has been no full-scale biography and he has been, one can argue, a poorly understood figure in Irish history. At the very least he has been a person whose biography has not been fully developed. The question has been hanging for some time, just who was Robert Emmet and what led him to his destiny? How did a young man of intelligence and promise from within the Anglo-Irish elite reach the point where he sacrificed not only a comfortable future, but his life, to lead a rebellion that had little chance of success? Often more symbol than real, three-dimensional person, Emmet, and 1803, have been seen as little more than shadows of 1798 and the United Irishmen, or a perhaps a short, tragic, last chapter in that story.

There has long been a need for a comprehensive, thoroughly researched, modern biography of Robert Emmet. Ruan O'Donnell of the University of Limerick has met that need with this volume and a companion volume Robert Emmet and the Rising of 1803. O'Donnell has previously written on the 1798 rebellion in Wicklow and its aftermath through 1803. The two volumes on Emmet are not presented by the publisher formally as a two-volume work, but, in fact, they are. This volume follows Emmet's life up to the eve of the 1803 rising. It brings Emmet to the brink of his emergence as a major player in Irish history. It ends with a sense of incompleteness, that the prelude is over, the real story is about to begin. The current volume stands alone well, however, and does a good job of illuminating Emmet's life and his journey to 1803.

One of the obstacles to a full-scale, modern biography of Emmet has been the lack of a body of his personal papers for Emmet and the other inherent difficulties in reconstructing the history of clandestine activity long after those involved are gone. In the aftermath of Emmet's execution there remained a need to protect others who were involved from arrest and a similar fate. O'Donnell has scoured archival and printed primary materials to uncover what is known and what is knowable about Emmet's life and career and the result allows a very informative "life and times" biography of Emmet. By life and times biography I mean that the focus is almost always on Emmet in relation to the great events of his life and era, specifically his involvement with the United Irishmen and, in this volume, the 1798 Rebellion and its aftermath. There is not a lot on the inner life of Emmet or his inner thoughts, because there is not a lot of evidence to open those topics up to the historian. O'Donnell does succeed in developing a richly textured account of Emmet's life and his journey from promising son of the State Physician of Ireland to revolutionary leader and martyr for Ireland within the context of the public world within which he lived and operated. If there is not a lot of the inner, introspective Emmet (assuming there was an inner, introspective Emmet) there is a real Emmet, interacting with colleagues, debating opponents, making series of decisions about his future.

One thing that emerges clearly is that Emmet was a young man who attracted notice because of his ability and his promise. He was a young man with many options, more than most of his generation, and he chose to cast his lot and his future with the United Irishmen at a very early age. He never wavered from this commitment. O'Donnell's compelling portrait of Emmet, the youth of promise who sacrificed it all for a vision of the future of his country is a substantial accomplishment. O'Donnell recreates the environment in which Emmet grew to maturity and the social and mostly intellectual and political contacts that shaped his view of the world very effectively and persuasively.

This book is a major addition to our understanding of Emmet, but more than that it is a fascinating description of the intellectual and political environment within which the United Irishmen developed and how the movement continued after the failure of the 1798 Rebellion. This book and its companion volume will change the way we see Emmet and his place in Irish history.

--Murray State University